Alexander v. County of Los Angeles, s. 94-55243
| Decision Date | 29 August 1995 |
| Docket Number | Nos. 94-55243,94-55648,s. 94-55243 |
| Citation | 64 F.3d 1315 |
| Parties | 95 Cal. Daily Op. Serv. 6816, 95 Daily Journal D.A.R. 11,715 Jerry ALEXANDER; Tyrone Brown, Plaintiffs-Appellees, v. COUNTY OF LOS ANGELES, Defendant, and Brian Wilson; Harry Toluchanian; Orlando Atencio; David Smiley, et al., Defendants-Appellants. Jerry ALEXANDER; Tyrone Brown, Plaintiffs-Appellees/Cross-Appellants, v. COUNTY OF LOS ANGELES; Orlando Atencio; Brian Wilson; Harry Toluchanian; David Smiley; Philip Solano, et al., Defendants-Appellants/Cross-Appellees. |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — Ninth Circuit |
Edward M. Fox, Klass, Fox, Helman & Ross, Los Angeles, CA, for plaintiffs-appellees-cross-appellants.
Maureen Houska, Carol D. Janssen, and Scott D. MacLatchie, Franscell, Strickland, Roberts & Lawrence, Pasadena, CA, for defendants-appellants-cross-appellees.
Appeals from the United States District Court for the Central District of California
Before: LAY, * BRUNETTI and RYMER, Circuit Judges.
This appeal presents two basic issues: (1) whether the district court erred in denying qualified immunity to Los Angeles police officers involved in the detention and alleged arrest of the plaintiffs, Jerry Alexander and Tyrone Brown; and (2) whether the district court properly granted summary judgment in favor of the officers on Alexander's claim that the officers used excessive force.
On August 17, 1992, a robbery took place in the Security Pacific Bank parking lot at 1633 North Hacienda Boulevard, La Puente, California. The Los Angeles Sheriff's Department received a call that shots had been fired. When Deputy David Smiley arrived at the scene, a witness described the robbery suspect as a Black male, five feet and eleven inches tall, 190 pounds, twenty-five to thirty years old, with short hair, a moustache, and a receding hairline. He was wearing a blue and white striped shirt and black pants and had a gold tooth. The witness reported the robbery suspect left the scene with another Black male in a newer model, green, two-door Chevy Baretta, with partial license plate number ZBSD7. The suspects had fired shots at a witness as they were leaving the area. Deputy Smiley put out a preliminary crime broadcast to all units with a description of the suspects, the suspect's vehicle, and a warning that the suspects possibly were armed.
Deputy Solano was next to arrive on the scene. The victim of the robbery told Deputy About forty minutes after the robbery, as Deputy Smiley was searching for the suspects in the general vicinity of the crime, he observed two Black males in a teal green, four-door Pontiac Grand Am. The passenger in the car was wearing a blue and white striped shirt. In checking the license plate number, the officer found it did not match the number provided by witnesses, but that the car was an Avis rental car. Deputy Smiley nevertheless began following the vehicle because it had been his experience that suspects often modify or change the license plates on their vehicle to facilitate escape.
Solano that she had been robbed and gave a description similar to that given by the witnesses. The woman stated that the robber grabbed her head, threw her to the ground, took a money pouch out of her hand, and fled. Deputy Solano initiated a radio and teletype broadcast to all units.
Deputy Smiley advised other officers by radio that he needed assistance for a high-risk traffic stop. Subsequently, the vehicle was stopped and surrounded by several police officers with their weapons drawn, including all of the defendants. Jerry Alexander was the passenger in the car. At the time, he was a forty-five year old Black male, six feet tall, and weighing 155 pounds. He was wearing a blue and white striped shirt on the day in question. The driver of the car was Tyrone Brown, a twenty-three year old Black male, five feet and nine inches tall, 160 pounds, with a shaved head. Alexander and Brown were handcuffed and placed in the back of a patrol car while the officers searched their vehicle. The search of the interior was conducted by several officers and revealed a checkbook on the rear floorboard on the passenger side bearing a female name. A woman's purse was also found in the car.
Brown indicated to the officers that he was on probation at the time of the incident. After a search had been made of the plaintiffs' vehicle, and while the plaintiffs were handcuffed and detained in the patrol car, two of the police officers left to bring back one of the witnesses to the robbery. The officers' testimony is that they were gone approximately ten minutes. Immediately upon arrival at the scene, the witness was asked to make an identification of Alexander and Brown and could not do so. Thereafter, both plaintiffs were immediately released.
The plaintiffs filed a suit against the police officers and the County of Los Angeles alleging a violation of their Fourth Amendment rights, specifically for an arrest without probable cause. The plaintiffs also claimed that the officers used excessive force in handcuffing them. The district court, in ruling on the defendants' motion for summary judgment based on qualified immunity, found the officers were not entitled to qualified immunity for the arrest because the officers lacked an objectively reasonable belief that their actions were lawful. The court, however, granted summary judgment to the County of Los Angeles on all claims, and further held that the officers' motion for summary judgment on the issue of excessive force should be granted. We now vacate the district court's denial of qualified immunity to the officers for the allegedly unlawful detention of the plaintiffs and reverse and remand with direction that the defendants are entitled to summary judgment. 1 We reverse, however, the district court's grant of summary judgment to the officers on the issue of whether they used excessive force against Alexander during the period of his detention.
The district court found the specific right at issue was the right to be free from an unreasonable search and seizure and that right was "clearly established." It determined that it was reasonable for the officers to draw their weapons when stopping the plaintiffs as a precautionary measure and that action did not convert the stop into an unlawful arrest. The court further found that placement of the suspects in the patrol car, even though handcuffed, did not convert the detention into an arrest because the suspects were thought to be dangerous. The court concluded, however, that the detention of the plaintiffs in the patrol car for forty-five minutes to an hour converted the investigative stop into an arrest for which the officers We have previously outlined the appropriate inquiry when determining whether officers are entitled to qualified immunity for a Fourth Amendment violation: whether reasonable officers could have believed their conduct lawful under the clearly established principles of law governing that conduct. Act Up!/Portland v. Bagley, 988 F.2d 868, 871 (9th Cir.1993); see also Anderson v. Creighton, 483 U.S. 635, 641, 107 S.Ct. 3034, 3039, 97 L.Ed.2d 523 (1987). In determining whether the law in question is clearly established, "[t]he operation of this standard ... depends substantially upon the level of generality at which the relevant 'legal rule' is to be identified." Anderson, 483 U.S. at 639, 107 S.Ct. at 3038-39. In this case, we find the district court erred in identifying the legal rule at issue as "the right to be free from an unreasonable search and seizure." As Anderson makes clear, the legal rule in question must be defined in a more specific manner. In Anderson, the Court explained as follows:
did not have probable cause. The court emphasized that the automobile described by the witness to the robbery was not similar to the automobile stopped by the deputies. Although the colors of the two cars were similar, the vehicle described was a two-door Chevy Baretta and the vehicle stopped by the deputies was a four-door Pontiac Grand Am and had a different license plate. The court also found that the plaintiffs did not sufficiently match the description given by the witnesses to justify holding them for a witness identification. Based on this reasoning, the court found the officers were not entitled to qualified immunity and had violated the plaintiffs' Fourth Amendment rights.
[O]ur cases establish that the right the official is alleged to have violated must have been "clearly established" in a more particularized, and hence more relevant, sense: The contours of the right must be sufficiently clear that a reasonable official would understand that what he is doing violates that right. That is not to say that an official action is protected by qualified immunity unless the very action in question has previously been held unlawful, but it is to say that in the light of pre-existing law the unlawfulness must be apparent.
Id. at 640, 107 S.Ct. at 3039 (citations omitted).
Thus, in determining whether the law is well established, the issue as defined by Anderson is "the objective (albeit fact-specific) question whether a reasonable officer could have believed [the plaintiffs'] warrantless [detention] to be lawful, in light of clearly established law and the information the ... officers possessed." 2 Id. at 641, 107 S.Ct. at 3040. Our analysis, although somewhat related to the approach taken by the district court, looks not in terms of whether there was an arrest without probable cause, but rather whether the officers reasonably could have believed their conduct lawful in light of clearly established law and the totality of the circumstances. Under this approach, we find that the officers are entitled to qualified immunity.
There should be little doubt that the officers, based upon the description of the suspects given by the witnesses and the victim of the robbery,...
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